


unbroken || brave again

by ciredan



Category: The Centricide (Webseries)
Genre: Ancom is AFAB, Angst, Canon Transgender Character, Feelings, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Nonbinary Character, Trauma, Trigger Warning!, in depth discussion of stabbing, referenced misgendering, referenced transphobia, use ancoms pronouns you cowards, vent fic, vicariously getting therapy through kinning a politcal ideology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:07:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24354067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ciredan/pseuds/ciredan
Summary: Ancom shakes quer head. "No, it's alright. Feel like I gotta tell someone at some point and I'll talk to the bootlickers about this when I'm dead." Que grimaces, sits up straight, leans back on quer forearms. Looking up at the cavernous ceiling, que continues. "There was... a knife. I can't quite get the timeline straight and I haven't asked the others that were there for their version of events. But the guy made me apologise, stood me up, slapped me. I just kept repeating 'I didn't say nothing'. Don't know why.""Sounds stressful," Tankie rumbles out. "It is reasonable that you would not be thinking straight at that time. Have you gone to the authorities?"This gets a laugh-- sharp and without humour-- from the other extremist. "You know how I feel about cops. Besides," que speaks without affectation, "doesn't feel like it needs it. I'm fine. Nothing really happened."
Comments: 8
Kudos: 41





	unbroken || brave again

**Author's Note:**

> uwu based on a true story / please heed the tags / i triggered myself writing this
> 
> TW // ST*BBING

Anarkiddie had been vacant all day.

It wasn't unusual for quem to tap out of conversations completely, or to seclude quemself in quer room, or go for hours without talking to anyone or acknowledging the outside world, but this was somehow different. Que was irritable, jumpy, restless; Tankie had only spotted quem briefly in the long doldrums between noon and evening, when que emerged from quer room as if only remembering that quer body had needs if it were to continue functioning. Somehow que managed to start a fight with Nazi in the short time que was present, a particularly nasty one that culminated in a toaster being thrown, a flash of a blade, and Ancom blowing up and fleeing back to whence que came with a litany of curses trailing behind quem.

So Tankie found himself standing outside Ancom's door, staring at the little nonbinary decal that was peeling off the old wood and trying not to pay too much attention to the muffled sounds of distress coming from within.

(Ancom had been vacant all week and for most of the last, actually, if anyone had bothered to pay attention.

Que understood, mostly, that the others weren't mind readers, that the antisocial behaviour wasn't the biggest change of pace from quer actions normally. It hurt a little, though, to be suffering in tempered silence for all this time. Really highlights the fucked-up-ness of the current culture that quer roommates and supposed comrades and _friends_ weren't in the habit of checking up on one another usually. Que had been spending quer days alternating between panic attacks (which sucked) and a numb, trance-like state (that que doesn't think would technically qualify as dissociation but que didn't know what else to call it (it was also somehow worse)) that stretched on for hours at a time.

Ancom remembered that que had to eat. Que didn't remember much after that, only that they were suddenly dying and dead and in quer room, except que wasn't, actually; all quer organs were in place and que had no wounds and the date was the 23rd of March 2020, which was about... Que can't remember when it happened. It was Friday but not yesterday-Friday and que doesn't think it was last Friday but the one before that seems too long ago and it can't have been two weeks already, what day was it again? And every question and everything that que can't place or get straight is more evidence that none of this is real, that que is dead and dying and that this is all a trick of the light, a hallucination made up by quer brain as it splutters and struggles on the concrete and quer life fades from existence and--)

_KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK_

"Anarkiddie? Are you alright, comrade?"

\--And Ancom is vacant.

Que shuts down like que is want to do under duress, like what got them in this fucking situation in the first place. A moments' repreive-- a minute, ten seconds, an hour, who knows any more-- but then Tankie is inside quer room and approaching Ancom cautiously, like que is a particularly difficult child (or a bomb (or a self-aggrandised man with a knife and a fragile ego in the park that you don't really want to deal with right now (or ever, really))) and not a fucking human being who is grappling with... Que doesn't want to say trauma. Tankie perches next to where Ancom is lying on the bed in the middle of the wreck that is quer room, not quite facing quem and obviously uncomfortable.

"Are you okay, comrade?" he asks again.

Ancom gives it as long as que can bear it, but it's clear that Tankie isn't planning to stop pestering them quite yet. It takes a while to find the words, to push them up past the garbled screaming and out of quer throat, burning, protesting all the way like it's being turned inside out. "It's- No. Do I- look. I look alright?"

Tankie gives a hum, hiding his face like he's embarrassed. "Of course," he says, and it comes out so easily that Ancom wants to strangle him. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"A little," que croaks out after a moment, very pointedly looking away from Tankie's face. It doesn't look real: the movements too expressive, over-animated, something grotesquely ugly and fake about the human condition in a way that Ancom can't fathom right now. Que is certain that Tankie looks fine usually, it's just all a little intense right now.

The bastard just hums again. From the corner of quer eye, que can see that Tankie is looking fixedly at a spot on the floor. It doesn't seem to be noteworthy at all, but que finds quemself following his gaze and staring at the same spot as que undertakes the monumental effort to push quemself to a sitting position on the bed.

A small while passes with them sitting in tense silence. Ancom belatedly realises that Tankie is expecting quem to talk about it now, and suddenly the thoughts all twist up and around each other into knots that can't be pulled apart of out, a tangle of sentence fragments and ideas that que is too scared to let out to the scrutiny of other people. Que gulps, slouching so far forward that quer head is practically between quer knees.

"Is it Nazi?"

Ancom shakes quer head, grateful for the specific question, and gestures back behind quemself with a jerk of quer thumb.

"That is a concerning change, if it was not Nazi for once!" Tankie chuckles, then quietens himself with a cough as if catching himself in a faux-pas. "What is...?" He copies Ancom's gesture.

"Before," que whispers. Quer voice is cracked and it takes more effort but it's less frustrating than the usual game of charades que usually has to play to communicate non-verbally.

"This morning?" Ancom shakes quer head. "Yesterday?" No. "Thursday? Monday?". Eventually he gets to "last week" and Ancom waves quer hand as if to say "'round about."

Tankie allows a moment to pass in silence. Though Ancom is looking down between quer legs, que can tell that Tankie is staring. Que focuses on breathing for now, trying to ignore the attention. It usually took a while to get used to talking again after que shuts down, let quemself remember how to form words, to allow quer confidence to build up. There's a rustling, a slow drag of movement as Tankie draws his legs up under him on the bed. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. It is gently tilted towards Ancom, who takes one without a word.

It takes a moment-- finding a lighter, fumbling with the wheel and the flame through shaky hands-- to get it lit. Ancom takes a drag. It's a Ukranian brand that Ancom can't read, one that Tankie always seems to have on him. It's quer first fag all day but the rush is dulled slightly, tinged by a quiet sadness. It's at least easier to cope with than the all-encompassing dread.

"I start- started smoking ~~more~~ , after _it-it-_ it happened," the admittance comes ponderously, a surprise to both of them.

Tankie is staring down at his own cigarette next to quem. "What happened?" he asks quietly.

"I was," que gulps, takes in a shuddering breath, without the filter of tobacco to remove quemself from the world this time. It's stark, fresh; reminds quem that que is alive with a functioning body, with all the organs and parts that make quem real; reminds quem that que is in the present moment, in quer room with quer comrade and two living, beating hearts between them. "Was at the park with some of the other anarchists. We were just hanging out and stuff, waiting for Anarcha-Feminism to get there. Then this, fuckin', guy bikes over. Thinks I said something to him." Ancom takes another drag, revels in the heady feeling of the smoke, watches without concern as the ash drops carelessly from the end. Que brushes it away and absently rubs the residue into the sheet. "Didn't use to smoke. It was mostly weed beforehand."

"Odd. I have not known you to abstain from such things," Tankie comments. He looks around as if to locate an ashtray and, seeing none, taps the ash into his own open palm and closes his fist around it. He rolls his shoulders back, grunting stiffly with the effort. "Still, that cannot be all... Would you want to stop talking?"

Ancom shakes quer head. "No, it's alright. Feel like I gotta tell someone at some point and I'll talk to the bootlickers about this when I'm dead." Que grimaces, sits up straight, leans back on quer forearms. Looking up at the cavernous ceiling, que continues. "There was... a knife. I can't quite get the timeline straight and I haven't asked the others that were there for their version of events. But the guy made me apologise, stood me up, slapped me. I just kept repeating 'I didn't say nothing'. Don't know why."

"Sounds stressful," Tankie rumbles out. "It is reasonable that you would not be thinking straight at that time. Have you gone to the authorities?"

This gets a laugh-- sharp and without humour-- from the other extremist. "You know how I feel about cops. Besides," que speaks without affectation, "doesn't feel like it needs it. I'm fine. Nothing really happened."

"Obviously you are not fine. You are a braindead shut-in at the best of times but this is a complete other level of that." Tankie sighs, raises the cigarette again to his lips and struggles to helicopter it for a short moment before returning it, dead, to the pack for later.

"Seriously, I'm fine." Que hesitates for a second, worries quer lip between quer teeth, then lets it go in favour of biting the inside of quer cheeks. "Feels like I cheated."

"What do you mean?"

"The dude, he had a friend with him. Must've got sick of waiting so he came over as well to see what was going on. Took one look at me and asked if I was a boy or a girl. I saw my out, said I was a girl. The dude completely changes his tone, says he's sorry, that he didn't realise." Ancom laughs dryly. "Truly, this is concrete proof that men are the more oppressed gender. Feel disgusting about it though, like it somehow makes me less valid that I'd apparently rather be alive and a girl than dead and," que gestures vaguely about quemself, "this."

Tankie is silent for a long while. "I think you did what you needed to stay alive. The choice between being affirmed and dead and misgendered and alive is not one that you should have had to make in the first place. It isn't your fault."

"No offence," Ancom starts, "But I don't really give a shit what cis people are going to think about what I did. Learnt long ago that you'll jump on any chance to say we're faking it. For whatever reason I'm more scared of others in the community calling me a trender or whatever. It's fucking viscious self-immolation around there." Que pauses for a moment, then reiterates the "No offence."

"The others will know better than anyone the dangers of being visibly trans. No one would fault you."

Ancom breathes. Que takes a moment to glance around the room. Sees the desk and the chair and the posters, the trans flag hanging from the wall, the shitty peeling wallpaper, the mess of clothes and wires tangled up on the floor. Que notices quer array of lighters, papers, empty filter boxes, the way the lightbulb dangles from the fixture, slowly becoming detached from the ceiling. Que sees all the ways that quer living space has changed since last week, where quer notebook was left splayed open on the desk, surrounded by pens and markers; where quer bong was lying on the nightstand instead of tucked away on the back of the shelf; where que had stacked and knocked over and re-stacked precariously the pile of games for quer 360, which remained disused under a copy of some theory book que had picked up and tried to read and put down again in frustration; where glasses and bottles had piled up on the window sill, the desk, the nightstand, the floor under the ledge of the bed.

"What if," que breathes again, slow and shaky. "What if it happens again? What if I get on testosterone and it happens again and I don't have that fucking _out_ any more?"

"There is no use thinking in such ways about the future," Tankie says. "It might happen. In all likeliness it will not. If it does happen, it is something that is done to you, not something that you have brought upon yourself. It is cruel and filled with uncertainty, but all this fear will do is stop you from living your life. This response-- this anxiety-- it is a defence mechanism you have learnt from that experience. It does not have to be so overwhelming." 

Ancom falls against Tankie's side, exhausted, shaking.

"I will help you, if you ask me."

They hold each other like that, in the dark, until Ancom stops trembling and looks up, until que peels away from quer comrade with shaky resolve, until they are brave enough to face the outside world in all its entropy and light.

**Author's Note:**

> wack shit needed to write/talk about this/work out my feelings at some point and im not in therapy any more so this is the next best thing :blushing:
> 
> lifted entirely from real life; most everything i wrote about is true/actually happened (difficulty speaking/going nonverbal, "i didnt say nothing", waiting for a friend at the park, faces looking weird and fake, being convinced that i had died and that this was all fake, starting smoking afterwards (dude who threatened me actually came back half an hour later to ask if any of us had a lighter); some of it is attributable to possible autism so if you read or relate to this ancom in that way i will not fault you, but i dont have a dx so if its ambiguous that would be the reason), except for the ukranian cigarettes. i have/had a friend who did exclusively smoke ukranian cigarettes but it's embellished a little because i would have to give him a quid for one and also cause i can read cyrillic. also i never talked about this with him, but its all little ways of relating it back to the actual event that happened. it was also not last week, it was september 2018 and i only ended up talking about it after breaking down in spanish class around april last year cause we learnt the word "cuchillo", but i wanted to make it more relevant to the time i'm writing this. i'd thought that i was mostly over it, it had quietened a lot over the past year and i wasn't having flashbacks any more, but i've been having a bad time with it again recently so this was my way of Coping lol. guess my brain just associates this time of year with feeling like shit (its probably cause we're doing eyewitness testimony in psychology and did a whole lesson on "weapon focus" where we watched an "experiment" video where an actor gets "st*bbed". half glad its from lockdown cause i am sick of having flashbacks in class, half wish it'd happened there so it'd at least trigger some support from college yknow?).
> 
> i hope it is at least helpful to someone, it took two days to write (which is quicker than most things for me) but i ended up reliving it and having a pretty nasty flashback in between sessions. i almost didnt want to finish it, thought i might make it worse or realer by having put it into words, but it's been nothing but cathartic so far and i'm glad i at least got to the point where tankie gives reassurance to ancom, since the working title was "vicarious therapy.txt" and when i paused the writing i had done quite a bit of the vicarious and not so much of the therapy. current title is derivative of the line "who could ask to be unbroken or be brave again" from [to noise making (sing) by hozier](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eUFtrQvsBc), which i think is just a lovely sentiment: you can spend your time wishing it never happened, wondering "why me?", but in the end you just have to be brave. and it is bravery; its not trivial to continue living in the face of being held at knifepoint aged 15 by a man youve never seen before two-hundred metres from your highschool, and i wish someone had told me that when it happened cause i ended up spending a good year convincing myself that it "didnt count as traumatic" because i "wasnt actually stabbed". this is my way of telling myself that what i'm feeling wasnt and isnt an overreaction. it might be harmful, and self-destructive, and it might fucking _suck_ ; but repressing those feelings is not the way to heal.
> 
> sorry for the long authors note, and thank you for reading.


End file.
